A mechanised millet-pounder or a microwave oven can make women's lives easier. But such technologies may also bind her more strongly to her domestic role. How can women consumers shape technology to suit their wider horizons?

An Indian schoolgirl leans forward to check what she's written on the computer screen. Across the sea in Malaysia, a young woman in a factory rubs her eyes before squinting once more into the microscope to fix integrated circuits on a chip of silicon. A Peruvian mother in childbirth sighs as she listens to the bleep of the machine which is monitoring her unborn baby's heartbeat. Meanwhile, two African farmers look askance at a new bicycle-powered contraption. Apparently it is a maize-sheller brought in by the foreign development planners to make the work easier. But surely those male planners had realised that the farmers, who were Muslim women, were forbidden to sit astride?

Technology touches women's lives in many ways, with sometimes extraordinary results. It is increasingly becoming part of their experience. The local supermarket has a new computerised check-out system; the office bristles with word processors; video programmes are beamed into the village; at the clinic, doctors are easing implants of contraceptive hormones into women's arms.

As consumers, women are assailed on all fronts by technology. 'Buy this washing machine, it's "the appliance of today's science",' urge the advertisements. And why not get a food processor, a steam iron or a new cooking stove too? Surely these make women's lives easier?

Well, maybe. Husking and grinding mills do save women's time, freeing them to work in other areas such as growing food. The humble Thermos flask now found in many Chinese homes has made it possible for people to take the ordinary drink of hot water without always having to kindle a fire to heat it first as they did before.¹

Yet technology can readily be used to bolster the status quo. Household appliances are a case in point. Although these are meant to be 'labour-saving' and are welcomed because of this, the acquisition of new technologies in housework does not always reduce the time spent, nearly always by women, in doing chores. Many studies in the West suggest in fact that with modern appliances housework time has gone up rather than fallen.² Having a vacuum cleaner means that the house must be kept ever more clean. Once the washing machine is bought for example, it is assumed that curtains previously sent out to be cleaned will be done at home in the machine, in addition to the 'normal' clothes wash.

The same is true for women in the developing countries. The new well and pump near the village certainly make fetching water easier for the women. This could mean better health. But now because the water source is nearby water is less carefully used. Some have observed that about five times more water is needed than previously.³ It is not that higher standards of hygiene and better health are not good, or that technology developed to help achieve them undesirable. The point is: technology does not always — as it is often assumed — make it easier for women.

Nevertheless technology — the knowledge that lies behind the techniques for making or doing something — has the potential to transform women's lives for the better. And it affects everyone in varying degrees.

Some are inventors of technology — people who design new devices and develop new techniques. Some are constructors or assemblers, skilled or semi-skilled workers who make the product. All of us are technology's consumers — using the final product: the bicycles, fridges, canned food and telephones.

Out of such roles, women are less likely to be the inventors (for instance, only 5 per cent of the architects in the UK are women⁴). Some are constructors and assemblers (about 80 per cent of the micro-electronics labour force is female⁵), but all are consumers. Therefore women are consumers of technology developed mainly by men.

But to say that the problems women face about technology are because technology is 'man-made' would be over-simplistic. The issue here is the need to raise the consciousness of technology inventors — whether they be men or women — to take into account not only the needs of women but also the impact of technology on women's lives. Women consumers need to have greater influence on how technology is developed for their use. And having more women technology inventors is one way.

Nevertheless, it is a fact that there are fewer women in the field of science and technology. Why is this so? Dot Griffiths of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science believes this is because technology is seen as a male activity, so it is socially appropriate and acceptable for men to acquire such skills. 'Boys are no more born with spanners in their hands than girls are born with knitting needles,' notes Griffiths. 'Tinkering with objects from an early age predisposes boys towards things technical.'⁶

Women are further distanced from shaping the technology they use by increasing specialisation. To examine this point let us take a closer look at technology. Technology can be broadly divided into three types:

• Basic technology. People make things for themselves out of locally available materials without any help from outside their community/tribe/family. These are tools for survival such as hoes, jars, stoves and spears. In this basic technology, the women is frequently the inventor, constructor, user and repairer.
• Sophisticated, mass production technology. This includes for instance, cars, radios and the humble plastic pail. The consumer is not the generator nor the constructor and usually also not the repairer.
• 'Hi-tech' technology. This is technology handled directly by very few although indirect users may be many. Example are aeroplanes, nuclear power plants and X-ray machines.

Women's involvement is still relatively intact in the first area above. With increasing specialisation in the mass production and 'hi-tech' levels of technology, women are edged out from participating in the design and development.

So what do women want from technology, and how can they go about ensuring they have a stake in it? Some of their needs are of course the same as men's. The aims of technology for all consumers should be:

• To reduce drudgery and save time.
• To do the job more efficiently and reliably.
• To be cost-effective.
• To be easy to handle and maintain.
• To be safe.
• To be socially appropriate and culturally sensitive.

But two more aims are specific to women:

• Technology should not create or increase inequalities between the sexes.
• It should enhance women's status in the community through their use of it.

How does the practice square up to the theory for the woman in Bangladesh as she draws water from the well? Or for women farmers? Or for the girl who stacks shelves in a Manila supermarket?

Cutting down the drudgery is important. Bringing in a new technique can reduce the time spent doing repetitive tasks, such as pounding grain which can take up to two hours every day. It's a back-breaking job, and one that can easily be mechanised. Women in Guyana needed the means to grate coconut more rapidly and in greater quantities. Coconut is a basic ingredient for many dishes there. With a hand-operated machine the women were not only able to reduce the time spent doing the task, but also they could increase their output and operate commercially, making coconut sweets, tarts and buns.⁷

And clearly, any new technique must be better than what it replaces, in efficiency, reliability and cost-effectiveness. UNICEF's Nadia Youssef and Mary Hollnsteiner note that 'inefficiency can stem from the over-simplification of designs and methods because technologists underestimate rural women's skills, equating illiteracy with lack of capability'. Women have rejected 'improved' techniques — such as types of oil presses or scythes — because they either made the task take twice as long, or were far more tiring for the women to operate, so that the output fell and profits tumbled.⁸

At the same time, new methods should be easy to handle and maintain. The Third World is littered with rusting relics of technologies that failed on these counts. Millet mills imported into Senegal for instance constantly broke down because the villagers had not been trained in their use or how to repair them.⁹ The rich world also has its similar disasters — Britain's Advanced Passenger Train for instance. This had a highly sophisticated tilting mechanism for going round bends at speed which, when the train could be made to operate at all (which was seldom), made the passengers feel quite sick.

It goes without saying that the technology should be safe, but sadly this is not always the case. In Asia kerosene stoves are widely used for cooking. And some models are top heavy or otherwise unstable so that a cooking pot placed too near the edge can tip them over. Quickly, the kerosene spills over the floor, bursting into flames.

Introducing technologies that are socially acceptable and culturally sensitive is hard for foreign development planners. In West Africa for example, the traditional staple foods of millet and sorghum are washed or moistened to trigger fermentation before milling. This gives the lakh (porridge) and tiere (couscous, a staple dish) a better taste. But the new imported mills couldn't take wet grain. 'You have to use dry grain, and my husband complained about the flavour,' said one of the women. As a result, she continued, 'some women have to resort to old pounding methods because their families won't accept the new taste.'¹⁰

The use of a technology is determined by the social context in which it is placed. The procedure called amniocentesis (used to diagnose babies with Down's Syndrome and hereditary illnesses) is a case in point, for it can also be used to determine the sex of the unborn child. In countries where boys are prized more than girls, pressure is on women to produce sons. Say writers Amrita Chhachhi and C. Sathyamala, 'In the Indian context, where female infanticide still continues in spite of being banned overtly, such tests (as amniocentesis) would result in femicide.'¹¹

And what about the aims of technology specific to women — that it should not result in further inequalities between the sexes, and that it should enhance women's status in the community?

Technology is often hailed as a leveler, something which helps put women on an equal footing with men. The washing machine or dish washer are cited: now men can load them and do their share of these chores. Whether they do or not is another matter. Unfortunately the introduction of new methods can make a woman's task harder. The man with his new tractor can now cultivate many more acres, but the woman who does the weeding, still equipped with her hand hoe, cannot keep up with him. The job is not more equally shared as a result of his shining new piece of technology; the woman's task has grown. It is not the technology itself that is creating the inequality, but that its effects on all the people involved have not been taken into account.

This can even happen when new methods are introduced specifically to help women. One of technology's aims for women should be to boost their self-esteem and enhance their standing by giving them the means to earn money and be more self-reliant. But sometimes when a new mechanised process has been brought into a village women have found themselves stripped of job which gave them an income. This can come about because men are identified with machines and have taken over an operation once it involved machinery, as was the case when mechanized corn-grinders were introduced in Kenya: the men were taught to operate them, and benefited from the income generated.¹²

Women need to participate in the cash economy if they are to be equal and to be respected. But the materials and techniques they need are not those for tie-dying, baking, sewing and food processing if these only reinforce their marginal position and keep them in the subsistence domain. In Swaziland for instance. Ivy Mkhomta first learned crochet at the Entfonjeni Appropriate Technology Centre. But she soon switched to making building blocks. 'There is a market for blocks,' she explains. 'We sell them to people building houses or schools. There was no market for crochet.'¹³ In other words, it is not just an implement or technique that is at issue but the control, usefulness and wider application of that machine or process.

So technologies have to fulfill all these criteria, to be an advantage from all angles, to be wholly appropriate. 'Water is not just pipes, it is also people,' comments Norway's Prime Minister Gro Brundland. And in many cases technologies aimed at improving life for a village have failed women because the planners and local leaders have overlooked their needs, and not acknowledged the lack of support they receive from men.

'Instead of examining why women after hard work in the fields and markets have to return home to cook, care for children, gather fuel and water and take care of animals, the development planners seized upon appropriate technology,' comments Anita Anand, an associate of Isis International Women's Information and Communication Service. She goes on, 'Smokeless stoves, grinders, seed hullers, hoes and so on were invented and improved to cut the time spent on these tasks. The inherent sexism that is still so clear in many societies today, which permits men to return from the fields, bathe, eat and go visiting has never been questioned.'¹⁴

For women, the best patterns of technology — those that meet general consumer needs for cost-effectiveness and so on, as well as women's specific requirements for equality and respect — may well come from other developing countries: for example a process of making and using cement jars for catching rainwater in Thailand has been adopted in Kenya.¹⁵ And the Technology Consultancy Centre in Ghana has successfully transferred improved technology to women soap-makers in Mali.¹⁶ Technology by and for women is on the increase, and groups are compiling examples which women elsewhere can use.¹⁷

Consumer organisations can also help, by offering their facilities for testing and improving technologies, as the British Consumers' Association has done with locally made pumps from Ethiopia. 'We have been testing hand pumps since 1979,' says CA director Peter Goldman, 'and we make it our business to find out how consumers use pumps and what they expect from them. Women and children mainly do this work, so we arrange user trials to investigate how difficult the pump is for them to handle.'¹⁸ This is clearly one way where the expertise of the larger consumer groups in the West can be applied to evaluate technologies used by consumers in the Third World.

If women are to shape technology to suit them, and enhance their position through this empowerment, it is not just a question of joining the men on men's terms to work to their ends. The whole nature of technology needs changing, and there is every reason for women to begin that process now. Ela Bhatt of the Self-Employed Women's Association in India sees it like this: 'We welcome technology that improves our living conditions, working conditions, but we do not want technology that snatches away whatever little income-generating work we have. We are rural women, spending half our life fetching home water, fuel and fodder. We want them at our doorstep. We are artisans, help us to create better tools for faster production.'¹⁹

Notes

1. Myrdal, J. and Kessle, G. China: The Revolution Continued. Random, New York, 1972, pp.11-12.
2. Oakley, A. The Sociology of Housework. Martin Robertson, London, 1974, p.94.
3. 'Water — Resource for Life', in New Internationalist, no.103, September 1981, pp.10-11.
4. Boys, J., Bradshaw, F. et. al. Making Space: Women and the Man-Made Environment, Pluto Press, London, 1984, p.2.
5. 'The Third Dimension', in New Internationalist, no.162, August 1986, p.14.
6. Griffiths, D. 'The Exclusion of Women from Technology', in Arnold, E. and Faulkner, W. Smothered by Invention: Technology in Women's Lives. Pluto Press, London, 1985, p.36.
7. Softley, E. 'Word Processing: New Opportunities for Women Office Workers?', in Arnold, E. and Faulkner, W. Smothered by Invention: Technology in Women's Lives, p.235.
8. Science Policy Research Unit Women and Technology Studies Group. 'Microelectronics and the Jobs Women Do' in Arnold, E. and Faulkner, W. Smothered by Invention: Technology in Women's Lives, p.211.
9. Sandhu, R., Sandler, J. et. al. The Tech and Tools Book: A Guide to Technologies Women are Using Worldwide. International Women's Tribune Centre/IT Publications, London, 1986, p.73.
10. Youssef, N. and Hollnsteiner, M. R. 'Technology, Income and Organisation: Communicating Change to Women', in Assignment Children, vol.63/64, 1983, pp.75-76.
11. Engel, N. 'The Flour Didn't Taste Right' in UNICEF News, Issue 117/1983/3, p.25.
12. ibid.
13. Chhachhi, A. and Sathyamala, C. 'Sex Determination Tests: A Technology Which Will Eliminate Women', in Medico Friend Circle Bulletin, no.95, November 1983, p.3.
14. Hilsum, L. 'The Thud of a Thousand Hoes', in UNICEF News, Issue 117/1983/3, p.9.
15. ibid.
16. Anand, A. 'Rethinking Women and Development', in Women and Development. Isis Women's International Information and Communications Service, Geneva, 1983, p.8.
17. Balcomb, J. 'Technology: Appropriate for What and for Whom?' in UNICEF News, Issue 117/1983/3, p.6.
18. Carr, M. 'Has Anything Changed for Women?' in Appropriate Technology, vol.9, no.3, December 1982, p.4.
19. Sandhu, R., Sandler, J. et. al., op. cit.
20. Goldman, P. ' " ... Nor Any Drop to Drink" Which? Aid: Testing Waterpumps", in Which?, March 1986, p.106
21. Quoted in Sandhu, R., Sandler, J. et al., op. cit., p.130.